The possible destination of Hiroshim is intriguing. Kochi to Sinapore certainly fits for this destination. Hiroshima International Airport only has arrivals from 4-5 cities to the west of Japan. Taipei, Shanghai, Inchon and Dalian. There are very reasonalbe connections from Singapore to Shanghai, Inchon and Taipe. From those three cites are flights to Hiroshima all arriving within 10 minutes of each other around 8 pm at night. There are flights from Narita and Haneda in Toyko all day long, but last one is around 9 pm at night.

Why would Production get the teams to Hiroshima so early the night before the Leg in Osaka on the morning of the 19th? Well, might the Game Show Roadblock take place in the middle of the night in Hiroshima? Since it is indoors, it won't make any difference in the filming in HD.

The Bullet trains shut down at midnight till 6 am........so no travel to Osaka till at least 6 am. Then what about the ferry ride to Miyajima Island? It appears to be a long ferry ride to the island from Hiroshima, but unless they are required to make the same reverse itinerary, from Miyajima Island to Miyajimaguchi Train Station is only a ten minute ferry ride. The bullet trains do not stop there, but a local train to Hiroshima Station to catch the Bullet train to Shin Osaka would get them to Osaka by around 8 am at the earliest to do the Detour and find the Pit Stop..........

Maybe they just send them to Hiroshima to waste time and make sure they cannot arrive in Osaka till early on the 19th to do all the tasks. Maybe there is a HoO on the island and a group camp out, similiar to Baku?

If they are flying from Nairobi to Kerala, South India, then they could just as well fly into Calicut International Airport in Karipur, Kerala as either Kochi or Trivandrum. Kozhikode (formerly Calicut) is known as the city of spices and is a textile center. It has many arrival flights from all over the Middle East, Kuwait, Oman, Saudia Arabia and all the emirates. Seems the Arabs like to hire the people of S India for their worker bees. It also has domestic connections to Mumbai and Delhi if they go somewhere else first in India. As far as exiting South India…..I think they would have to leave by either Kochi or Trivandrum. Both those airports have connections to either Kuala Lumpur or Singapore and both those airports have connections direct to Osaka.

thanks DrRox. Never thought they will do two full legs in my home state of Kerala. TAR may not return to Kerala for along time, next time it will some other part of India. Good to know that you also mentioned about Singapore as a connection airport.

Welll teams flew Kochi>Singapore>Shanghai> Hiroshima.......landing at 8:10 pm on Dec 18, 2011. The flight to Hawaii was interesting. Teams were on the 2nd of 3 possible non-stop flights (Hawaiian Airlines) from Osaka to Honolulu.......I would highly suspect that Phil, Bertram and crew were on the first flight (Delta).......that landed one hour earlier. That gave Phil a very good head start on doing his standups.

I am going to comment separately on the two major points Dr. Rox has made. First, that the reason teams were on the second flight is that Phil and the WRP staff were on the earliest one. I say that Phil and WRP staff were about 24 hours ahead of the F3 in departing from Osaka. There were these flights:

My second comment is on Dr. Rox's assertion that teams flew Kochi to Singapore to Shanghai to Hiroshima. I agree with the first 2 legs but say that it difficult to tell about the third leg. To get the schedule we are seeing (departure Dec. 16 on SQ467 COK SIN at 2345 0742+1), there is a choice of Shanghai versus Seoul as the next connecting point. My opinion (at this point it is only that) is that Seoul was the connection. that means that the flights were SIN ICN SQ16 0932+1 1647+1 to ICN HIJ OZ162 1836+1 1958+1. This arrived essentially at 8pm.

The combination one can infer from Dr. Rox's proposal starts with SIN PVG and that can be on any of several flights leaving from 9am until 1039am. That is where the inconclusiveness starts. Normally flight information is available on when flights depart and arrive. however, for that date and flight MU293 the listing if for departure at 1746+1 and arrival at 1548+1. Hmm, that's quite a bit impossible, particularly since Hiroshima is in a time zone one hour ahead of Shanghai. The normal scheduled time of arrival is 810pm, which is the only piece of data lending credence to Dr. Rox's hypothesis. Maybe he's right and teams flew through Shanghai, maybe he's not. It cannot be determined without further evidence.

I am going to comment separately on the two major points Dr. Rox has made. First, that the reason teams were on the second flight is that Phil and the WRP staff were on the earliest one. I say that Phil and WRP staff were about 24 hours ahead of the F3 in departing from Osaka. There were these flights:

DL278 2057HA450 2104JL78 2124

Just so I make sure I understand what you are saying, apskip, are you saying that Phil and WRP crew left Osaka on the evening of Dec 18th and NOT the evening of Dec 19th as I believe to be the case? I am taking about the calendar date in Japanese time, btw, not Hawaiian time.

I am going to comment separately on the two major points Dr. Rox has made. First, that the reason teams were on the second flight is that Phil and the WRP staff were on the earliest one. I say that Phil and WRP staff were about 24 hours ahead of the F3 in departing from Osaka. There were these flights:

DL278 2057HA450 2104JL78 2124

Just so I make sure I understand what you are saying, apskip, are you saying that Phil and WRP crew left Osaka on the evening of Dec 18th and NOT the evening of Dec 19th as I believe to be the case? I am taking about the calendar date in Japanese time, btw, not Hawaiian time.

All my dates as reported in this thread are in local time. What point would it be to translate that to US East Coast or Central time?

I believe that the flights from Japan left Osaka around 9pm Japanese time on Dec. 19 and arrived in Honolulu on either side of Dec. 19 Honolulu time. This is of course possible because Japan time is UTC+9 AND Honolulu time is UTC-10. The total difference of 19 hours gives flights ample time to "arrive" before they "departed". Another way of saying this is that when you cross the International Date Line eastward you push your clock back one day.

I am going to comment separately on the two major points Dr. Rox has made. First, that the reason teams were on the second flight is that Phil and the WRP staff were on the earliest one. I say that Phil and WRP staff were about 24 hours ahead of the F3 in departing from Osaka. There were these flights:

DL278 2057HA450 2104JL78 2124

Just so I make sure I understand what you are saying, apskip, are you saying that Phil and WRP crew left Osaka on the evening of Dec 18th and NOT the evening of Dec 19th as I believe to be the case? I am taking about the calendar date in Japanese time, btw, not Hawaiian time.

All my dates as reported in this thread are in local time. What point would it be to translate that to US East Coast or Central time?

I believe that the flights from Japan left Osaka around 9pm Japanese time on Dec. 19 and arrived in Honolulu on either side of Dec. 19 Honolulu time. This is of course possible because Japan time is UTC+9 AND Honolulu time is UTC-10. The total difference of 19 hours gives flights ample time to "arrive" before they "departed". Another way of saying this is that when you cross the International Date Line eastward you push your clock back one day.

I am really sorry to be a pain, but exactly just who flew to Hawaii on the evening of Dec 19. Was it the teams or was it Phil and the WRP crew? If you mean that the teams flew on the 19th........then you must mean that Phil and the WRP crew flew on the 18th......per your 24 hours lead time statement above? None of your flight schedules have departure dates in them so it is very hard to understand just exactly what you mean.

Flying to Hiroshima appears more probable now. I would not do a round-trip on the bullet train from Osaka to Hiroshima and back UNLESS there were bad flight connections into Hiroshima. the one above is OK except for leaving in the evening. I have another here that also leaves in the evening but gets there 4 hours elapsed time quicker than any of the best Cochin to Osaka flights I have found:

However, due to the evening departures, I believe that the flight combination starting in Cochin will be the one actually used because it departs and arrives in the morning and the one above does neither and earlier one in my prior post in this thread depart in the evening.

I would like to give kudos to jacobsk68 who hypothesized that Singapore would be a connection on the route. That will be true if teams fly this route through Singapore and Seoul to get to Hiroshima.

Here is your Osaka>Honolulu itinerary.....again there is no date mentioned........

I am going to comment separately on the two major points Dr. Rox has made. First, that the reason teams were on the second flight is that Phil and the WRP staff were on the earliest one. I say that Phil and WRP staff were about 24 hours ahead of the F3 in departing from Osaka. There were these flights:

DL278 2057HA450 2104JL78 2124

So what are the departure dates for these two flight itinerairies? That is if you dont mind posting them?

Let me remind you that I have essentially volunteered to do the work normally part of the The Amazing Race 20 » Timeline & Spoiler Summary.

I previously in this thread carefully tracked the dates through the departure in India, which would have been Dec. 16 (actually Dec. 15 at 2345 for the first flight of the combination to Hiroshima) or Dec. 17 (actually Dec. 16 at 2345). The difference is an extended pit stop in the Kochi area. I believe this happened, so the departure Dec. 16 at 2345 relates to that.

Going forward, arrival would be the evening of Dec. 17 in Hiroshima and arrival Osaka the afternoon of Dec. 17. With an extended pit stop, I see teams as heading for KIX early afternoon Dec. 19. The flights are the evening of Dec. 19 and arrivals in Honolulu the morning of Dec. 19. That's my timeline.

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

I'm in the midst of rewatching the finale from the I Tunes download, and there are quite a few time cues in the first part of the Hiroshima-Osaka leg that help point to the flights taken by the final four teams.

First, we're told about Rachel-Dave's release time in Cochi, 1:51 pm. Since teams in India have to purchase their tickets from a travel agency (this goes back to TAR 1, remember) before they arrive at the airport that should help narrow down when the teams left. It should also provide information as to when Phil and his camera crew left Cochi because of the daylight for Phil's stand ups in Japan (He had none in Hiroshima and his first one was the game show in Osaka). The travel agent for Rachel-Dave quite clearly says that their arrival in Hiroshima would be at 8:10 the next evening, and that it was the fastest flight available.

We don't get any help from the Amazing Red Line on the Bing globe, but we get some clues as to the arrival time based on the fact that teams had to buy tickets to take a shuttle bus to the train station to get to the island, and had to buy tickets at the train station (several edits tell us 10:20 was the next departure, and then a 21:55 (9:55 pm) time on a digital clock in the train station.) Then we also have the time of the last ferry departure that evening and the first departure the next morning; we ought to be able to work backwards from this to see if just one flight fits all of this together. (I personally suspect it does; and it should be possible to get an estimate of the time it takes the shuttle bus to get to the train station.) I'm basing this on what had to be done in other seasons at times to reconstruct timeline elements, but I think it likely it'll be possible to do it.

(I'm not going to rub it in over the teams flying into Japan at Hiroshima or Osaka...it made sense to me for them to do so this time, once we knew about the Osaka pit stop, since the show has a pattern in recent seasons to pick airline flights that have very few or only one option for the teams, and to manipulate the pit stop releases to force those options while giving production a head start to the next destination. It avoids a lot of bunch in mid-leg and artificial HOO.)

OK, Peach, I don't often question what you say and this is not one of those times. I do ask that you identify where in the timeline kept up by me in this thread the extra day happens (to replace the one that a 2 hour pitstop frees up). The only way that 2 hour pitstop and departure from Osaka on Dec. 19 in the evening can be reconciled is in Kochi with a much longer extended pitstop so that departure from there is actually 2345 on Dec. 17, arrival in Hiroshima is Dec. 18 around 8pm and the pitstop in Osaka starts late afternoon of Dec. 19. Is that your understanding of what happened?

How long was the flight from Osaka to Honolulu supposed to take? I noticed Art/JJ saying they had a 12 hour flight and were going to get some sleep, but that doesn't add up. The HA 450 flight (by the sign they show) departs at 2115 which would be 0215 in Hawaii. Given from bspencer's pics D/R were at the towers at 1013, this points to a ~7hour flight.

I am under the impression that the longest PitStop this season was about 16 hours, but

Logged

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

bcp19, I haven't gotten to that part of replaying the episode yet, but as I recall the teams were told they were booked on flights that arrived early in the daytime of the 19th (Hawaii time) my mind is saying after 6 am (6:30?, 6:50?) but there's always the possibility that teams went to an unaired route marker that was edited out of Phil's recitation of the pit stop release clue, and we have no idea one way or the other. However, if the teams had known before they arrived in Hawaii what they had to find, then we wouldn't likely have had teams asking their taxi driver if they knew what the place was that was described in the clue, and the teams likely would have had an address or a place name that would have gotten them there directly.

This season has been like an early season where a timeline had to be constructed after the season finished airing, and there were willing Racers to help reconstruct the timeline details.

I'm not surprised by the info Peach mentioned about the longest pitstop not having been more than 16 hours this season. I think teams had to have spent a lot of time this season in airport layovers (unaired) in order for the show to get teams into and out of South America, Africa, and India much less to Japan, and for many of these areas, there really weren't direct flights at all. And given the total time for filming.

How long was the flight from Osaka to Honolulu supposed to take? I noticed Art/JJ saying they had a 12 hour flight and were going to get some sleep, but that doesn't add up. The HA 450 flight (by the sign they show) departs at 2115 which would be 0215 in Hawaii. Given from bspencer's pics D/R were at the towers at 1013, this points to a ~7hour flight.

You are pretty close, bcp19. It is scheduled as a 7 hour 45 minute flight. It was about a 7.5 hour flight for Dec. 19.

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan